It was a clear, balmy day in the first week of April that the count sought this interview with the doctor. So far in his life, he had never found a man who was so much “after his own heart.” He believed in him fully from the first hour he conversed with him, since when they had corresponded, expressing their views fearlessly; and thus far had found them in perfect accord. To say they loved each other like brothers would by no means express the sentiment existing between these two men, so unlike in many respects, yet so closely in sympathy that thought answered to thought like the voice of one’s own soul. During the drive, for they went past the fifty acres away into the country, neither asking for what reason, the count gave in detail his plans. “If I build this palace,” he said, “I shall do it with this clear granite sand of the river. I know the secret of making stones of it—bricks, we call them—which, moulded in any shape, and tinted any hue, will last for centuries. I can have a man here in three days to conduct the work. He will guarantee that they shall be finished this summer. If I do it, it shall be a magnificent structure, beside which the palace of Versailles will seem the work of a ‘prentice hand.’ I can profit by the original palace at Guise, and make it much handsomer, though that is truly splendid. The apartments must be larger, and the whole should accommodate about two thousand people. Now, I have already one industry for its occupants. What is your idea for a second?” “Making these very bricks,” said the doctor, “if only you have got at the secret of their perfect durability, as you have, I know, or you would not speak so positively. But this industry would not suit all. You want one more.” “Of course. One that will employ women. What shall it be? I have thought of silk-weaving, for a certain reason of my own. It is proverbial, you know, that those who make the silks, laces, and velvets—pure luxuries, and the most costly—are the worst paid of any laborers in the world. Look at Spitalfields, England, and Lyons, the great velvet manufacturing centre of France. In India, those who make the fabulous-priced Cashmere shawls are the most pitiably paid of all. I am willing, if necessary, to lose a considerable fortune to prove that good wages can be paid to silk-makers, and yet have a fair profit on the product. I should go into that manufacture with some advantages. I have a first class steamer already plying between San Francisco and China. I can get silk as cheap as anybody.” “Good!” said the doctor. “Let the third industry be silk-weaving.” The count had not mentioned the first, but the doctor knew well he meant floriculture. “There’s only one thing lacking, doctor, and that is—the motive: the motive for the first step. That depends——” And suddenly checking himself and turning his horse in the road, he asked, abruptly, “Doctor, have you ever been in love?” “With a woman—no; with a man, yes.”